Reminiscences of a Stock Operator

The market had frequent rallies as before, and I kept covering and putting them out again. I didn’t, strictly speaking, sit tight.

The reason for what a certain stock does to-day may not be known for two or three days, or weeks, or months. But what the dickens does that matter? Your business with the tape is now—not to-morrow. The reason can wait. But you must act instantly or be left.

When I am long of stocks it is because my reading of conditions has made me bullish. But you find many people, reputed to be intelligent, who are bullish because they have stocks. I do not allow my possessions—or my prepossessions either—to do any thinking for me. That is why I repeat that I never argue with the tape. To be angry at the market beca

That a bull market has added to my bank account or a bear market has been particularly generous I do not consider sufficient reason for sticking to the bull or the bear side after I receive the get-out warning. A man does not swear eternal allegiance to either the bull or the bear side. His concern lies with being right.

I remembered that on previous occasions when I had the same urge to sell and didn’t do it I always had reasons to regret it.

experience. A man may know what to do and lose money—if he doesn’t do it quickly enough.

The professional concerns himself with doing the right thing rather than with making money, knowing that the profit takes care of itself if the other things are attended to. A trader gets to play the game as the professional billiard player does—that is, he looks far ahead instead of considering the particular shot before him. It gets to be an inst

I never buy a stock even in a bull market, if it doesn’t act as it ought to act in that kind of market. I have sometimes bought a stock during an undoubted bull market and found out that other stocks in the same group were not acting bullishly and I have sold out my stock. Why? Experience tells me that it is not wise to buck against what I may call

If I was right when I tested my convictions with ten shares I would be ten times more right if I traded in a hundred shares.